How to Draw Realistic Faces

Many artists struggle when drawing faces because capturing a likeness to your model or to the photo or reference you are using, can be difficult. I say can be because it doesn't have to be difficult. To see more info on how to draw faces realistically visit our About Me page. This guide will give you the basic tips on the process. Again, capturing a likeness and having your drawing come alive is what makes the difference between a good artist and a just okay artist. This ability is attainable and you can capture the likeness of anyone by following these simple steps. It can be difficult if you don't understand the principles and process of drawing faces but when you do understand these you will be able to capture emotion, personality, and a likeness like never before.

Block-in Method

Start Big! Best advice ever...

When you start your drawing, you will want to remember that when you are doing your block-in, always start with light lines at the beginning. A lot of artists make the mistake of going for the gusto and start with big, heavy, dark lines, don't do this! Start light and block-in the hair, the head, the neck, and the shirt if you are going to go that far down the body. If you aren't just block-in to the neck.

One of the biggest mistakes that an artist makes, when drawing faces or the figure, is that they start to refine the details way too soon. They start drawing little fine details in this stage, this is not good. It is not the time to start refining your drawing, that will come later. Start Big! When you begin blocking in the head you'll want to keep the hair mass separate at first. And speaking of hair, every artist needs to remember to treat hair as a mass and not try and draw every single strand of hair. This is a beginner's mistake that a lot of artists tend to do. You never want to get caught up in drawing every strand of hair on someone's head.

Next Step...

Now you can use your measuring techniques to help you with your proportions and finding where the placement of your features will go. If you don't have a measuring technique, check out our about me page for more info on this. Divide the head into visible planes. As you do this, you'll be using more geometric shapes now, they'll be more angular and sharp as you start in with the features. You will start the refining of shapes now and take them to smaller shapes now. Then you will want to draw the contour.

Establishing Values...

Once the contour is drawn, values need to be established. This is done by dividing the light from the shadows. Look and see where your light source is coming from. Sometimes, artists make the mistake of not establishing where the light source is coming from, this is dangerous to your drawings.

Continue this process of refining and working on your values. Some artists like to increase the tone at this point to help refine the features more and add detail. Finish your drawing off and make sure that you have your values correct. This is a major part of capturing a likeness to who you are drawing.

Finally...

Remeber that drawing becomes more natural the more you practice doing it.  Practice, Passion, and Patience will take you all the way to becoming an accomplished artist at drawing faces and figure drawing. Keep practicing and you will see a big difference when drawing faces and trying to capture a likeness to the person you are drawing. Try going to drawing classes or going to a local school for some cheap classes to do life drawings each week. A lot of universities and colleges will offer drawing classes for just a model fee of about 7 dollars. This will help you because you will get more drawing done and you can watch other artists as well and maybe pick up a few techniques from them. This will help you in your technique and pick up tips you may not have known.

For more info and complete steps on how to draw faces and complete figure drawings visit our Learning2draw About me page and start drawing today.